I just read the new novel by Jay McInerney, who is a friend of mine. And I did so with great apprehension, because it takes place around the time of those attacks. But I thought he handled it beautifully, since he comes at it from a bit of a side angle. (Julian Barnes)
I think he had a quite sort of ambiguous relationship to Holmes. It made him rich, it made him famous, but as often the case with these things, a writer can turn against his or her most successful creation hence, he killed him off (in 'The Adventure of the Final Problem') and brought him back by popular request. And, of course, people did sort of confuse them and assume if he could invent these complicated mysteries, then he could also solve them. (Julian Barnes)
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves (Julian Barnes)
Braque was like some hilltop castle that Picasso was constantly besieging. He invests it, bombards it, mines it, assaults it - and each time the smoke clears, the castle is as solid as ever. (Julian Barnes)
The land of embarrassment and breakfast. (Julian Barnes)
I was also interested in the racial side of it. Even today, the Chief of the London Metropolitan Police is trying to make the force more representative of London and there's a lot of resistance from the predominantly white force. (Julian Barnes)
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature only then can he see clearly (Julian Barnes)
It's the great drama, the great unknowable of most of our lives, ... We don't all paddle up the Amazon in a canoe and get shot at, but we do the equivalent of that (in our relationships). (Julian Barnes)
Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and that's gone, that's true. But I don't think we have less influence in the hearts and minds of readers. I think, if anything, we have just as much, if not more. (Julian Barnes)
The writer's life is full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life. (Julian Barnes)
I did read Sherlock Holmes as a boy but I never thought for a moment that I'd ever write about Doyle, (Julian Barnes)
I briefly considered writing it as a non-fiction book but the fact of the matter is that George left few traces, (Julian Barnes)
You grew old first not in your own eyes,but in other people's eyesslowly,you agreed with their opinion of you. (Julian Barnes)
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex. (Julian Barnes)
Talking It Over' is the only one of my books people asked me what happened next, ... And they disagreed about what happened when the book concluded. (Julian Barnes)